The woman wiped tears from the dirt on her face. "He comes."

"Who?"

"The one from my dreams. The dream walker."

"Who is this dream walker?"

Simona shrank back. "The Keeper."

Verna paused. "This dream walker is the Keeper?"

She nodded so hard Verna thought her neck might come unhinged. "Sometimes. Sometimes, he's the Creator."

Warren leaned in. "What?"

Simona flinched. "Is it you? Are you the one?"

"I'm Warren, Sister. A student, that's all."

Simona touched a finger to her cracked lips. "You should run, too, then. He comes. He wants those with the gift."

"The one in your dreams?" Verna asked. Simona nodded furiously. "What does he do in your dreams?"

"Torments me. Hurts me. He…" She kissed her ring finger frantically, beseeching the Creator's protection. "He tells me I must forsake my oath. He tells me to do things. He's a demon. Sometimes he pretends to be the Creator, to trick me, but I know it's him. I know. He's a demon."

Verna hugged the frightened woman. "It's just a nightmare, Simona. It's not real. Try to see that."

Simona almost shook her head right out of its skin. "No! It's a dream, but real. He comes! We must run!"

Verna smiled sympathetically. "What makes you think that?"

"Told me, he did. He comes."

"Don't you see, dear? That was just in the dream, not when you're awake. It's not real."

"The dreams are real. When I'm awake, I know, too."

"You're awake now. Do you know now, dear?" Simona nodded. "How do you know, when you're awake, if he isn't there in your head to tell you, like when you dream?"

"I can hear his alert." She looked from Verna's face to Warren's, and back again. "I'm not crazy. I'm not. Can't you hear the drums?"

"Yes, Sister, we hear the drums." Warren smiled. "But that's not your dream. It's just the drums announcing the impending arrival of the emperor."

Simona touched a finger to her lip again. "Emperor?"

"Yes," Warren comforted, "the emperor of the Old World. He's coming for a visit, that's all. That's what the drums are."

Her brow creased in worry. "Emperor?"

"Yes," Warren said. "Emperor Jagang."

With a wild shriek Simona leapt into a corner. She screamed as if she were being stabbed. Her hands flailed. Verna rushed to her, trying to catch her arms and calm her.

"Simona, you're safe with us. What is it?"

"That's him!" she screamed. "Jagang! That's the dream walker's name! Let me go! Please let me go before he comes!"

Simona tore away, careering around the room, sending flashes of lightning flicking everywhere. It raked the paint off the walls like glowing claws. Verna and Warren tried to calm her, tried to catch her, tried to stop her. When Simona could find no way from the room, she began bashing her head against the wall. Simona was a small woman, but she seemed to have the strength of ten men.

In the end, and with great reluctance, Verna was forced to use the Rada'Han to gain control.

Warren healed Simona's bleeding forehead after they had quieted her. Verna remembered a spell she had been taught to use on boys newly come to the palace, when they were having nightmares from being taken from their parents, a spell to calm fears and let the frightened child sleep a dreamless sleep. Verna clasped the Rada'Han between her hands and sent a flow of her Han into Simona. At last, her breathing slowed, she went limp, and she slept. Verna hoped it was a dreamless sleep.

Shaken, Verna leaned against the door after she closed it on the dark room. "Did.you find out what you wanted to know?"

Warren swallowed, "I'm afraid so."

That wasn't the answer Vema had expected. He didn't offer anything more. "Well?"

"Well, I'm not so sure Sister Simona is insane. Not in the conventional sense, anyway." He picked at the braiding on the sleeve of his robe. "I'll need to do more reading. It could be nothing. The books are complex. I'll let you know what I find."

Verna kissed her finger, but felt the stilt unfamiliar touch of the Prelate's ring under her lips. "Dear Creator," she prayed aloud, "keep this foolish young man safe, for I may snatch his head bald and then strangle him with my bare hands."

Warren rolled his eyes. "Look, Verna — "

"Prelate," she corrected.

Warren sighed and at last nodded. "I guess I should tell you, but understand that this is a very old and obscure fork. The prophecies are clogged with false forks. This is doubly tainted, because of its age, and its rarity. That makes it suspect even if it weren't for the rest of it. There are crossovers and backfalls galore in tomes this old, and I can't verify them without months of work. Some of the links are occluded by triple forks. Back-tracing a triple fork squares false forks on the branches, and if any of them are tripled, well then, the enigma created by the geometric progressions you encounter because of the — "

Verna put a hand to his forearm to silence him. "Warren, I know all that. I understand the degrees of progression and regression as they relate to random variables in bifurcations of a triple fork."

Warren flicked his hand. "Yes of course. I forget what a good student you were. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just rambling."

"Out with it, Warren. What did Simona say that makes you think she may not be insane, 'in the conventional sense'?"

"This dream walker she mentioned. In two of the oldest books there are a few references to 'dream walker. These books are in bad shape, hardly more than dust, but the thing that worries me is that because the books are so old, the mention of dream walker might only seem rare to us because we have only two of the texts, when in fact it might not be rare at all for back then. Most of the books from that time were lost."

"How old?"

"Over three thousand years."

Verna lifted an eyebrow. "From the time of the great war?" Warren confirmed it was so. "What about the dream walker?"

"Well, its hard to understand. When they mention it, it's not so much a person, as a weapon."

"A weapon? What kind of weapon?"

"I don't know. The context is not exactly that of a object, either, but more of an entity, though it could be a person."

"Maybe it's meant in the way that a person who is so good at something, like a blade master, that they are often described, with respect, or reverence, as a weapon?"

Warren lifted a finger. "That's it. A very good way to describe it, Verna."

"What do the books say this weapon did with this skill?"

Warren signed.”I don't know. But I do know that the dream walker had something to do with the Towers of Perdition that finally cut the Old and New Worlds apart and kept them separated for the last three thousand years."

"You mean the dream walkers built the towers?"

Warren leaned closer. "No. I think the towers were built to stop them."

Verna stiffened. "Richard destroyed the towers," she said aloud, not intending to. "What else?"

"That's all I know, so far. Even what I've told you is largely conjecture. We don't know much about books from the time of the war. For all I know, it could simply be tales, and not real."

Verna rolled her eyes to the door behind her. "What I saw in there looked real to me."

Warren grimaced. "Me, too."

"What did you mean about her not being insane 'in the conventional sense'?"

"I don't think Sister Simona is having deranged dreams and imagining things; I think something real happened and that's what made her the way we see her. The books allude to instances where this 'blade master' of sorts slipped, and left the subject unable to separate their dreams from reality, as if their mind can't fully wake from the nightmares, or slip from the world around them when they sleep."

"That sounds like insanity to me, not being able to distinguish what's real from what's not."